LinkedIn members who list AI literacy skills are 78% more likely to get hired and 11% more likely to receive a promotion than members who do not, according to network data LinkedIn published today. The figures arrived with the launch of LinkedIn Pulse, the new name for the site LinkedIn previously ran as the LinkedIn Economic Graph, which gathers the company's research on hiring, skills, careers and the economy.

The release covers far more than one comparison. From July through September 2026, founder ranked among the 10 fastest-growing roles in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and India, according to LinkedIn, while AI Engineer ranked among the 10 fastest-growing occupations in seven economies. LinkedIn also estimates that AI "has helped create roughly 2 million new jobs" - a number published without a time period, a geography or a method.

Who is getting those jobs? Not everyone equally, by LinkedIn's own account. Women make up about one quarter of new AI hires, and in 2025 more than 90% of AI roles went to workers with at least a bachelor's degree.

In Short

LinkedIn studied its own members and found that people who list AI skills are more likely to get hired and promoted, that "founder" is one of the fastest-growing job titles, and that AI has helped create about 2 million jobs. It matters to marketers because marketing is one of the professions where employers now ask for AI skills, even though only just over 1 in 100 LinkedIn members lists one. LinkedIn did not explain how it calculated most of these numbers, so they show where hiring is moving rather than proving that AI skills are what got anyone a job.

What LinkedIn published

The post appeared on the LinkedIn Pressroom on October 27, 2026, under the byline LinkedIn Corporate Communications, filed in the Data and insights and Research categories. It contains no quotes from named executives or economists, no methodology section and no footnotes. Its structure is a list of five key insights, five themed sections and a block of frequently asked questions that restates most of the headline numbers.

LinkedIn describes Pulse as "a destination for ongoing LinkedIn data and insights about the forces reshaping economic opportunity." According to LinkedIn, the site draws on data from 1.4 billion members, 71 million companies and 42,000 skills. The stated aim is "to connect signals that are often viewed separately," such as a slowdown in overall hiring that runs alongside rising demand for particular occupations, or workers building skills in one market while employers search for them in another. On the Pulse site itself, the only methodology note says hiring data is updated monthly to reflect the prior month. The site lists the OECD, the World Bank, the International Labour Organization and the World Economic Forum among its partners.

The membership figure has moved during the year. When LinkedIn rebuilt its feed from scratch in March 2026, using large language models for retrieval and ranking, it described a platform reaching more than 1.3 billion professionals. The same 1.3 billion figure appeared when LinkedIn passed 100 million members in Brazil in June. LinkedIn's Global Green Skills Report 2026, published on October 22, referred to one billion members around the world. Today's release does not explain the move to 1.4 billion, and it does not say how many of those members are active.

LinkedIn frames Pulse around three questions, listed in the release's closing section: "Where is opportunity growing? Who can access it? And what may help more people reach it?"

AI literacy: rising demand, few members listing it

AI literacy carries most of the release's argument. The share of job postings requiring AI literacy skills "has jumped roughly 65% in each of the past two years and is now more than 10 times the 2023 rate," according to LinkedIn. The key insights section of the same page describes the 65% jump as happening "in the last 12 months," without mentioning the earlier year.

The two descriptions can both be true, but the arithmetic deserves a closer look. Two consecutive 65% increases compound to roughly 2.7 times the starting level, according to a PPC Land calculation. For the share to exceed 10 times the 2023 rate, it would already have needed to grow about 3.7 times between 2023 and the start of that two-year window. LinkedIn does not publish the underlying share, so the base on which these multiples rest is unknown. A tenfold rise from a very small starting point can still leave AI literacy a requirement in a minority of postings.

Then come the hiring odds. "LinkedIn members who list AI literacy skills are 78% more likely to get hired and 11% more likely to receive a promotion than those who do not," the release states. It does not say how "more likely" is measured, over what period, or whether the comparison accounts for occupation, seniority, industry or country. Members who list a skill may also differ in other ways from members who leave the field blank. Are they more active job seekers? Do they update their profiles more often? The release does not address either question, and its key insights heading uses more cautious wording, saying that AI skills "are linked to better odds of getting hired and promoted."

Pay is the third measure. In the United States, "workers with AI skills move into occupations that pay an average of $28,000 more than the occupations entered by workers without them," according to LinkedIn. The phrasing matters: the figure compares the average pay of the occupations people entered, not the salaries of the individuals who moved, and the release does not name the source of the pay data.

Then there is scarcity. "Yet only 1.2% of LinkedIn members list an AI skill today," the release states. Applied to 1.4 billion members, that would be roughly 16.8 million people, a PPC Land calculation that assumes the percentage refers to the full membership. The release uses three related terms - "AI literacy skills," "AI skills" and "an AI skill" - without defining any of them or saying whether they describe the same group of members.

Employers increasingly seek these skills beyond technical roles, "including in marketing, design, project management, administration and writing," according to LinkedIn. The release sums up its own argument in a single line: "AI is creating opportunities beyond AI jobs."

AI Engineer and the 2 million jobs estimate

AI Engineer ranked among the 10 fastest-growing occupations from July through September 2026 in Canada, Germany, India, France, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to LinkedIn. Entry-level hiring for AI Engineers grew 68% year over year in the United States and 55% in India. No absolute hiring counts accompany those percentages, and the release does not explain how "fastest-growing" is ranked.

The 2 million figure is the release's largest number and its least documented. LinkedIn "estimates that AI has helped create roughly 2 million new jobs," but the page does not say over what period, in which countries, or how a job qualifies. The words "helped create" leave open whether the count covers only new positions or also existing jobs whose content changed.

LinkedIn's previous labour market release offers a partial comparison. In June 2026, LinkedIn data showed the EU had added more than 256,000 AI-related roles since 2023 and the UK about 95,000, a combined total above 351,000. That analysis put EU hiring 26% below January 2019 levels and UK hiring 24% below, and attributed the weakness mainly to macroeconomic conditions rather than AI. It also found AI engineer hiring running 25% above the workforce average in the EU and 18% above in the UK. Today's release says only that hiring "remains slow across many parts of the world," with no overall hiring figures.

Entry-level hiring beyond AI roles

The 68% entry-level figure stands out against other recent data on young workers. Payroll research from Stanford's Digital Economy Lab, cited in a peer-reviewed paper published in July, found that employment for workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations fell 16% between October 2022 and September 2025, while employment for workers aged 35 to 49 in those same jobs grew more than 8%. In marketing services, an agency owner told a September 24 town hall that the firm had not hired college graduates in some time, although that evidence was anecdotal.

LinkedIn's release offers entry-level growth only for AI Engineers. It contains no entry-level figures for marketing, design, writing or the other professions where it says employers now seek AI literacy.

Founders, AI skills and smaller teams

Entrepreneurship is the release's second theme. Founder ranked among the 10 fastest-growing roles in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and India from July through September 2026, according to LinkedIn. The founder list covers five of the seven economies on the AI Engineer list; Canada and Brazil do not appear on it.

Founders are 12 times more likely than the average LinkedIn member to have an AI skill, according to LinkedIn, and "four in 10 professionals say AI has made them more likely to start a business." The release gives no sample size, survey date or country breakdown for that finding.

The most striking number concerns team size. "Founders who launched startups in 2024 employed 26% fewer people after their first year than those who launched in 2021," according to LinkedIn. The company is careful about what that shows: "The data does not show that technology caused smaller teams, but it raises a bigger question: could new tools help people build businesses differently from the start?" Its FAQ repeats the point more firmly, stating that "the data does not prove that AI caused startup teams to become smaller." Other factors could weigh on first-year headcount. LinkedIn's June analysis tied the broader hiring slowdown to tighter financial conditions and lower business confidence, and today's release does not say whether the comparison between the 2021 and 2024 cohorts accounts for those conditions.

Founder growth has been a recurring LinkedIn theme in 2026. In May, LinkedIn cited internal data showing US founder numbers up about 70% year over year as it added paid Advice Sessions and Hiring Pro tools for small businesses. When it began testing In-Stream Ads for US creators on October 15, it again said founders were up 70% on the platform, without a baseline date. Today's release replaces that percentage with a ranking. The June analysis had also found hiring at companies with 1 to 10 employees up 44% in the UK and 13% in the EU compared with 2019.

Who gets access

Women account for "only about one quarter of new AI hires," according to LinkedIn. In the company's green skills data published five days earlier, women made up 30.1% of green talent globally in 2026. The two figures measure different things - one counts new hires into AI roles, the other the stock of workers holding green skills - but both come from LinkedIn's member data in the same week.

Education is a sharper filter. "In 2025, employers filled more than 90% of AI roles with workers who held at least a bachelor's degree," according to the FAQ. The release does not give a comparable figure for all roles, so the size of the gap against the wider job market is not stated.

Geography is the third. As of September 2026, "just five countries/territories ranked among the top 10 for both the availability of AI builders and employer demand for that talent," according to LinkedIn. The five are not named, and neither top 10 list is published. The release uses "AI builders" in one passage and "AI talent" in another, without defining either term.

LinkedIn concludes that "where people live, their education, skills and career stage can all affect whether they can benefit from new opportunities." Its FAQ adds that "expanding access to the skills and experience needed to work with AI will be an important part of determining who benefits as demand grows." No training program accompanies today's release. LinkedIn has paired earlier announcements with upskilling offers: in May it made three LinkedIn Learning courses, including The AI Edge for Entrepreneurs, free through the end of 2026, and in June it opened 100 courses free for 100 days in Brazil.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Marketing is the first profession LinkedIn names when it lists where employers seek AI literacy outside technical roles. That is consistent with a Microsoft Research study of 200,000 Bing Copilot conversations, which placed sales, customer service and writing roles among the occupations with the highest AI applicability, while stressing that it measured what AI could do rather than what happened in workplaces. LinkedIn's release has a similar limit. It shows hiring and profile patterns, not whether marketing teams that use AI produce more.

At company level, the evidence points elsewhere. Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok concluded in an October 24 note that AI had produced no financial payoff for US companies outside tech, with revenue per worker and profit margins flat for the 493 S&P 500 companies outside the Magnificent 7. Higher pay for individual workers and flat margins for their employers can coexist, and LinkedIn's data says nothing about the second.

There is also an advertising dimension. The member records behind Pulse are the same records that LinkedIn sells as targeting. Job title, industry and seniority became targetable in Google's Display & Video 360 for US buys on connected TV on October 22, and Microsoft Advertising added job seniority to LinkedIn Profile targeting in June, with 10 levels across 29 markets. In May, Microsoft Advertising became a third route for buying LinkedIn profile-targeted CTV inventory, alongside Amazon's demand-side platform and The Trade Desk. When founder climbs into the top 10 roles in five economies, or AI Engineer into the top 10 in seven, the audiences B2B advertisers buy by title and seniority shift with them.

Pulse also names policymakers among its intended audience. In September, Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester and Ted Budd filed the National Talent Strategy Act of 2026, which would require the US Labor Department to produce a four-year federal talent plan; the bipartisan commission behind the bill cited a LinkedIn skills-data model.

LinkedIn says Pulse "will continue tracking those changes." Beyond the monthly hiring updates on the Pulse site, the release sets no schedule for further data, and it does not say whether the methods behind today's figures will be published.

Timeline

Summary

Who: LinkedIn, through its Corporate Communications team, with data drawn from what it says are 1.4 billion members, 71 million companies and 42,000 skills. The findings concern workers who list AI literacy skills, founders, AI Engineers, women, workers without degrees and employers hiring for AI roles.

What: LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Pulse, which replaces the LinkedIn Economic Graph site, and published data showing that members listing AI literacy skills are 78% more likely to be hired and 11% more likely to be promoted, that the share of job postings requiring AI literacy rose roughly 65% in each of the past two years, that founder and AI Engineer rank among the fastest-growing roles in several major economies, and that AI has helped create roughly 2 million jobs by LinkedIn's estimate. Women account for about a quarter of new AI hires, and more than 90% of AI roles in 2025 went to degree holders. The release publishes no methodology.

When: Today, October 27, 2026. The role rankings cover July through September 2026, the geographic comparison is as of September 2026, and the degree figure covers 2025.

Where: The release covers the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, India, Canada and Brazil by name, with a further five countries or territories referenced but not named. It was published on the LinkedIn Pressroom and the new Pulse site.

Why: LinkedIn presents Pulse as a way to track where opportunity is growing, who can reach it and what might widen access while overall hiring stays slow. For the marketing community, marketing is the first non-technical profession LinkedIn names where employers seek AI literacy, and the member data behind Pulse is the same data that powers LinkedIn targeting in DV360, Microsoft Advertising and connected TV.